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ORATION, 



DELIVERED ON THE FIFTH OF JULY, IS4], 



BEFORE THE 



NATIVE AMERICANS 



OF CINCIMATI. 



By Rev. CHAS. BrBOYNTON. 



CINCINNATI; 

Tagart & Gardner, printers, N. E. cor. Main and 'FiSth. 

1847. 



^■ 






Zj^ 



CORRESPONDENCE, 



CINCINNATI, Jdly 7th, 1847. 

Rev. Chas. B. Boynton, 

SIR: — At a meeting of the citizens of Cincinnati 
held on the 6th inst., the undersigned were appointed a Committee to request 
a copy of the Oration delivered by you on the Seventy-second Anniversary of 
our National Independence, before the Native Americans of this city. 

In compliance with tlieir wishes we respectfully solicit a copy for pub- 
lication. Yours, &c., 

CHAS. GRANT, 
OTIS ALDRICH. 



CINCINNATI, July 9th, 1847. 
To CHAS. GRANT and OTIS ALDRICH, Esqs. 

GENTLEMEN: — Yournote is before me, requesting for 
publication a copy of the Address, delivered at College Hall, on the 5th 
of July. 

If, in your opinion, its publication can either awaken or extend an inte- 
rest in American Principles, it is at your service. 



I am, Gentlemen, 

Your obedient servant, 



CHAS. B. BOYNTON. 



ADDRESS. 



Fellow Citizens: 

Whenever a clergyman undertakes the discussion of a 
political subject, he is often advertised as an estray, who 
must be arrested and returned to his proper quarters. He is 
regarded as one who has broken out of the enclosure, where 
public sentiment watchfully confines him; and as going in- 
continently forth to trespass upon the rights and feelings of 
society. 

If any holding such opinions are present here, I wish to 
remind them of the remark of a distinguished divine of our 
own times. He said, that in his state, there were only two 
classes of citizens who were deprived of the most important 
rights and hopes and privileges of citizenship. One class, 
he said, " were guilty of wearing a black skin, and the other 
of wearing a black coat." Having lost caste by these crimes, 
they were excluded from the select society of the political 
arena. As one of those who have been almost unanimously 
ostracised as guilty of a black coat, I have one word to say. 
The two mites of us ministers, who are so fortunate as to 
possess so much, are regularly taxed, and the assessments 
are regularly paid and with cheerfulness. We are expected 
to contribute in all ways, according to our ability, towards the 
support of our institutions, and this is just; but upon the 
very principle contended for, and fought for, and died for, by 
our heroes of '76, have we not the right to protest against 
this taxation from a government in which we are allowed 
no proper representation ? And if you persist in levying 
the tax, and make us parties to the maintenance of our civil 
institutions, as we desire to be, then why attempt to shut us 



6 

out from a reasonable share in the discussion of, and control 
of their action ? Has a minister of the gospel no love of 
country, no opinions of her policy which he would like to 
express ; may not his eye open on the Avorld's movement 
even as others. Has he merged the citizen and the man in 
the clerical office; is society for him but a wider cloister, 
where he must be as perfectly isolated from the common 
action and feeling of men, as if he were enclosed within the 
walls of the narrower cell ? Has he no heart to feel the 
great throb of public life ? Must his ear alone be deaf to the 
sounding surge of events ? 

Our clergymen are far from desiring to handle the weapons 
of partizan warfare; it would justly tarnish their fame, and 
ultimately ruin their influence. But that pubhc sentiment 
which would exclude from the pulpit, or forbid a minister 
otherwise to discuss, the moral and religious bearings of our 
political action, is working incalculable injury to all con- 
cerned. 

It serves to banish the word of God as a rule of conduct 
in politics; and public sentiment is corrupted by imperfect 
standards of morality. It dissociates the pulpit from the 
actual life of society; prevents it from vigorously seizing 
upon and moulding the forms of this present; serves to ren- 
der its teachings barren and dull; tends to contract the intel- 
lect of the preacher; to dwarf him to a pigmy, or shape him 
into a bigot with one idea; to cause the minister and his peo- 
ple to dwell in separate worlds; — so that his discourses, 
touching none of the events which most excite and control 
the public mind, faU upon the ear as if composed in an un- 
known tongue. 

Let a minister confine himself in his preaching to the 
truths of the gospel, but with these truths let him fearlessly 
sweep the whole field of human action. 

As a clergyman, I stand, of course, before you dissociated 
from all party action, and mere party purposes. But while 
1 have no party connections, hopes, or aims, I am not aware 
that in becoming a clergyman I have ceased to be an Ameri- 



can; and, when I discover that the duties of a minister are 
inconsistent with American feehngs, or American principles, 
T will either abandon my profession, or desert my country. 

On this morning, whose proud and glad associations carry 
us back to the birth-hour of our nation, as an American 
citizen, I claim not to be disfranchised by my profession. 
I demand my share of the common joy; and my right, upon 
the invitation of my countrymen, to set forth, according to 
ability, principles, which in the days of our fathers, were 
deemed necessary to the preservation of our nation. 

When storms are sweeping the vessel from her track, and 
the mariner is conscious that he is drifting, and yet knows 
not whither, nothing is deemed more important than to catch 
a glance of the sun, or even of some familiar star, from 
whence, by the aid of instruments and chart, the true 
position can be determined, and the ship headed to her 
course anew. 

Few now seemed disposed to deny that our nation has 
lost sight of her original features of policy. None can truly 
tell us in what direction our bark is headed; the winds strive 
on the great deep of the popular mind, and ahead — the 
sullen dash of breakers. It would be well then, if possible, 
to get an observation; and how can it be more effectually 
done than to fix our eyes upon tried and steadfast American 
principles, and calculate from them our position and bearings ? 
It is most fitting that this should be done on this very day, 
which links us by association directly with those times, when 
the American people could say, without a rebuke, or a sneer, 
or a threat : " This is our own, as well as, our native 
land." 

"What, then, are American principles; what is their char- 
acter, and what their value ? 

I will only pause here to give a general answer, proposing 
ere I close, to speak somewhat more in detail. 

In general terms, then, we may say, that genuine Ameri- 
can principles are identical with those of Protestant Chris- 
tianity; and when these principles are embodied in action, 



8 

they utterly refuse to assume any form except that of a Pro- 
testant Christian state. 

Passing for the present this point, let us inquire where 
American principles were born. From whence did they 
spring ? A correct knowledge of their origin, may, perhaps, 
enable us to determine their character. They are the cliil- 
dren of Christianit)'; they sprang directly from those sub- 
lime declarations of individual worth, and individual rights, 
which were embodied in the teachings of the Savior, and 
those very principles which our fathers brought and planted 
between the wilderness and the sea; received their original 
sanction in that hour when the veil of the temple was rent, 
and darkness shrouded Jerusalem; — for, in that hour, civil 
and religious hberty was the priceless gift which Jesus 
bestowed on the world. 

Those principles which have justly become identified in 
this age with the American name, — because in the early his- 
tory of our country they were here more distinctly than 
elsewhere asserted and embodied in fitting institutions, — are 
the very same which eighteen hundred years ago arrested 
the human mind in its universal decay and descent toward 
barbarism. The truths which our fathers declared and acted 
upon when the colonies were planted and nourished along 
the Atlantic, which they made the basis of every political 
structure they reared, are the very same which ti'od heathen- 
ism to ashes in the Roman Empire; which swept Europe of 
its savage idolatry, and built up nations bearing the Christian 
name. And when Rome had extended over the earth an 
empire more powerful than that of the Czars, and infinite- 
ly more despotic — more fatal to the hopes and liberties of 
man — these same truths marched to attack her; and, in the 
hands of Luther and his associates, they were like the shat- 
tering ball and shell — like the rending earthquake — like the 
lightning's scorching blight. These principles, born of the 
Bible, are armed with the Bible's power. They reacli down 
one hand to exalt the individual man, to give him his rights, 
his proper blessings and suitable instruction; and, with the 



other, tliey dash despotisms in pieces; no matter whether 
heeded by a mitred priest or sceptred monarch. 

Since the days of the Apostles, they have worn harness 
in the field; doing battle in behalf of man; abolishing hea- 
thenisms and despotisms; cheering on humanity in its slow, 
desperate march, opposed by tyrants, loved by the masses, 
hated of the devil, and the Pope. 

Tliat system of truth, then — religions and political — 
which by adoption here is now distinguished as American, 
is the same which was given to the world by Christ and his 
Apostles, which was afterward persecuted, nearly to death, 
hunted well nigh out of the earth, by the Roman hierarchy, 
for more than a thousand years. They marched out into 
all the earth against it with fire and sword, and rack and tor- 
ture, dungeon and chains, with gibbet and crucifix; doing to 
death in all ways in this world, and consigning to damnation 
in the next. But tlie spirit of liberty and true religion 
united, could neitlier be devoured by sword, nor scared over 
the boundaries of creation by anathemas, nor burned up with 
fire. In the time of the Refonnation, it found a voice still 
to protest against iniquity, and from that period it became 
Protestant — Protestantism; — and when it was cast out of 
Europe as evil, our fathers took it to their own bosoms, 
brought it to these shores; adopted it, and gave it the name 
of their country; and so, that mighty system of civil and 
religious liberty which the Savior published in Judea, having 
received in the early history of our government its fullest 
and distinct development, has been baptized with the Ameri- 
can name. The principles are known among us as Jlmerican 
principles, and the carrying them out in practice is simply 
to found and preserve a Christian, Protestant, Democratic 
State : a State whose basis should rest upon the Divine 
authority, and by which men should be governed according 
to the laws of God. 

It is well, perhaps, also to notice, in passing, what is often 
denominated the very birth-hour of the spirit which fled first 
to Holland, and then, in the May-flower, to the wilderness. 
2 



10 

I mean the time of its practical development in England, 
about the period of the first settlement of the New England 
colonies. The Reformation embodied not only the spirit of 
religion, but of civil liberty also; it contained the elements of 
human progress, and was as hostile to a monarchy as to the 
Papacy. Despotism, in all forms in church and state, found 
it a natural enemy, unyielding and indestructible as truth 
itself. It came into collision with the hierarchy and pros- 
trated it for a season; it swept the throne away, and for a 
short and brilliant period what we now call American prin- 
ciples were predominant in England. It was the most glo- 
rious era of her history. Never before, nor since, has the 
moral character of England stood so high, never did she 
cherish at home a more noble self-respect, never was there a 
higher, truer regard for her character abroad, than when her 
destinies were guided by the great puritan, Oliver Cromwell. 
The distinguishing features of policy which made the times 
of Cromwell the heroic period of England were in general 
the same which guided the course of our own country until 
after the death of our gi'eat puritan statesman, George 
Washington, and his associates. 

Puritanism is at least eighteen hundred years old. It is 
but another name for Apostolic Christianity, embodied in 
civil institutions. Puritanism, Protestantism, and True 
Americanism are only different terms to designate the same 
set of principles, working out in all laws with more or less 
success similar results. The struggle is ever to elevate 
humanity, to overturn and remove whatever can abridge, 
either the rights or the comforts of man; whatever can 
impede his progress, fetter the intellect, or interpose human 
authority between man and his God. 

Against all these, and all such things, American principles 
have eternal war, which can only be ended by unconditional 
surrender of the wrong. These are the original foundations 
of the American State. It was a Puritan State, which was 
founded in the cabin of the May-flower — those were Puri- 
tan colonies which shaped the early destinies of our country; 
they were Puritan orators whose spiritual lightning flashed 



11 

through the masses of the people, and kindled all it touched — 
and he was a Puritan who led our armies to victory. A 
Puritan Assembly produced the Declaration, and the Confed- 
eration was Puritan in all its principles, and all its aims. 
Puritanism, belongs not to New England only: it is found 
wherever a heart throbs with genuine American feeling. It 
is Protestant Christianity seeking to clothe the spirit of Lib- 
erty in a fitting body of free institutions; and surely, if to the 
Native American people any charge is specially committed, 
it is to see that such institutions are neither corrupted by 
improper admixture, nor subverted by priestly fraud, nor 
stricken down by violence. 

Such then was the origin, and such the character of those 
truths in government and religion, which are now distin- 
guished as American. They were the only basis of our 
nation as originally established. Until after the close of the 
Revolution the great aim of the people was to expand by 
natural growth from the colonial germs, until the land should 
be filled by a Protestant, an American people; a homoge- 
neous mass, fused to a unit by all the proud and tender asso- 
ciations of a common birthright, and a common faith, and 
animated by one single soul. This — and not a State formed 
of an ill-cemented human conglomerate — was the idea of 
our fathers. 

I will make here one remark, which it is important to bear 
in mind, as we go forward in this discussion. Spiritual 
Despotism finds in this system an exact, and the only anta- 
gonism to itself; and from the moment of its first appear- 
ance in Judea until the present hour, every hierarchy has 
hated, and persecuted, and cursed it; has striven to blot it 
utterly out. From the moment the Papacy was born, it de- 
clared war against Puritanism, for Puritanism is older than 
Rome; and that war it has waged with a nature that never 
changes, a heart that never relents, a hand that never falters, 
when it has the power to strike. Its hatred of all truly 
American is stereotyped, and the type is cut not in perisha- 
ble steel, but on the eternal adamant. It cannot wear out, 
but it may be melted by the breatli of the spirit of God, or 
dashed in pieces by His power. 



12 

This fact is an important one to be remembered, when we 
come to determine whether to g'liard ourselves ag-ainst Rome 
is intolerance, or righteous self-defence against an enemy, 
cunning and powerful, and bent to destroy. 

To found a Christian, Protestant state, and to expand it 
by natural growth from the native American root, rather than 
by foreign admixture: this was the aim and hope of our 
fathers. They wished that this land might remain a posses- 
sion for their children; they hoped that it would yet be filled 
to the utmost borders, with a native American people, or at 
the very least, that it should continue forever the home of a 
Protestant nation, where whoever was admitted to the rights 
of citizenship should be thoroughly Americanized. 

One question, which here arises; whether such a state is 
worth preserving; and, another, by what means had they or 
have we the right to render such institutions secure ? 

Upon the question whether such a State was worth pre- 
serving we will not spend a Inoment. If we doubt here we 
are not worthy to discuss it^ and every true American be- 
lieves that in its destinies were enfolded the most precious 
interests, the dearest hopes of man. But admitting that it is 
desirable that American principles should be preserved from 
contamination, and this nation remain distinctively American, 
what means are lawful for the attainment of our end ? Have 
we any peculiar and paramount title to the soil we as a na- 
tion hold ? Or are we to admit the truth of that doctrine 
which declares that the earth is held as the joint and com- 
mon property of all nations, and the immigrants who flood 
our country have rights here equal to the native born;, that 
they establish themselves here not by perinission from the 
American people, but by right derived from God, who 
hath given the earth as the common possession of all ? 

Have we any right, as a pre-established people, to shut out 
the immigrant, if Ave deem it necessary to tlie preservation 
of our country; or so to withhold the privileges of citizen- 
ship, that the foreigner shall understand our institutions, and 
be assimilated in spirit to them, before he shall have power 
to modify or control their action ? 



13 

Have the American people received the Protestant religion 
as a solemn charge from God, which they are bound to keep 
as those who shall give an account ? Is this land divided to 
them as an inheritance which they have the right in their 
discretion to defend ? 

To these questions, I answer — 

I. By the ordinance of God the nations have not a joint 
occupancy of this earth. They do not hold it as tenants in 
common, but as a divided inheritance. Had the race, with- 
out transgression, been developed from that first pair in 
Eden, there would have been one homogeneous family, and 
the globe their common and undivided inheritance. 

But when to recover fallen man the economy of grace 
was introduced, God saw fit for the planting, preservation 
and spread of truth, to change the whole arrangement. The 
human family was broken at Shinar into separate branches, 
and the earth passed from a common estate to a divided in- 
heritance. This arrangement, God in His providence, has 
preserved to the present, and its ultimate removal, the blend- 
ing of the different branches again into one great brother- 
hood, is an end to be reached only in that era where the 
triumphs of the gospel shall be universal and complete, and 
the nations of the earth shall be reheaded in Christ. 

I have said that a joint tenantcy of this earth is contrary 
to the ordinances of God. 

Permit me to offer the proof. " When the Most High 
divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated 
the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people." And 
again: " And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for 
to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined 
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habi- 
tation." 

All our codes of national law, assuming the individual ex- 
istence and separate ownership of the nations, are based 
upon the ordinances of God referred to in these passages; 
and upon the fact that the Most High has recognized their 
validity in all His providential dealings. In His work of 
preparing for the gospel dispensation, in the planting and 



14 

spread of Cliristianity, He has committed unto nations as He 
chose, a solemn charge : a trust of principles and territory; 
a precious deposit of truth, and a spot of earth sufficient for 
its maintenance. These he has required them to keep for 
Him and for humanity; and when false to the trust, when 
forgetful of the terms of stewardship, He has brought them 
to the reckoning, swept them away, and chosen Him other 
instrumentalities. 

Let us consider a moment his plan: 

By a course of training carried forward for four centuries. 
He prepared the Jewish nation to become the depositary of 
those truths and principles which most nearly concern the 
honor of God and the welfare of man. He assigned them 
their national territory, and by acts most clearly marked as 
His own, he put them in possession of Judea. How did he 
preserve the committed truth ? By holding it separate and 
pure. He hedged round the Hebrews by impassable bar- 
riers; he guarded them by the most stringent enactments 
from amalgamation with other nations, permitting no one to 
become a Jewish citizen unless he laid aside utterly his own 
nationality, and became by knowledge, by practice, and in 
heart, most thoroughly a Jew. No admixture of foreign 
material Avas permitted unless it could be so thoroughly 
assimilated as to become a living member of one homo- 
geneous body; and even then it was felt that important ad- 
vantages attached to the native born. Paul thought it a cir- 
cumstance not unwortliy to be mentioned that he was a native 
Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. 

At tlie commencement of the Christian era, the Hebrew 
nation had become false to its trust, and it could be no longer 
steward. The kingdom was taken from it, and with clearer 
liglit and enlarged privileges, and with a wider and- more 
clearly marked design, the great truths were committed to 
other instrumentalities. 

Those principles, Avhich were the basis of the Jewish 
Commonwealth, added to the clearer revelations of Jesus, 
were united in one system; were entrusted to a special 
organization instituted for the purpose, and designed for man. 



15 

Enshrined in this organization, Christianity went fortli, bear- 
ing the gift of political and eternal salvation, revealing the 
value of the individual man, proclaiming the equality of the 
race, and enfolding in its system the only rational idea of 
civil liberty which the world ever possessed. This system 
was Apostolic Christianity, simple, faithful and pure. It 
was the Puritanism which preceded the Reformation; it was 
Protestantism after the time of Luther. The same system 
was planted by our fathers by the edge of the forest which 
skirted yonder sea; and American principles became the 
western name for Protestant Christianity. The Christian 
Church, to which Jesus committed this system, proved false 
to its trust, within three hundred years from its founding; 
and out of its treachery and corruption, that terrific power, 
the Papacy, arose. For a thousand years and more, truth 
and liberty were crushed together, or hunted out of society. 
They were driven afar, into the recesses of the mountains, 
and pursued with the fire-faggot and sword. 

In the time of Luther, God once more gave to the true 
system a distinct embodying, and under the name of Protes- 
tantism it was now given in charge, first to Germany and 
Continental Europe; but those nations, after a short trial, 
failed to preserve its purity or to wield its power. Despot- 
ism in the civil governments was then too strongly esta- 
blished. 

In the time of Cromwell it received a sudden and clear 
development. It swept the hierarchy and the throne away, 
and the system of Apostolic Christianity, with its ti-uth and 
liberty, stood up and offered itself, under God, to England. 
She refused the offered boon; as a nation, she cast it from 
her, and what then? The Most High gathered out of En- 
gland a host of her choicest, her noblest men. They were 
led forth from Europe, like Israel from Egypt, with an up- 
lifted arm; they were transported to another hemisphere; 
they were separated utterly from the power and influence of 
the Papacy, and as the germ of a new nation he planted 
them, as he did the Jews in Palestine, where they could have 
full and free development: and committed to them afresh 



16 

the solemn trust of Protestant Christianity and human lib- 
erty. Never since the foundation of the Jewish Common- 
wealth has a nation been planted by God on earth, in regard 
to which His intentions were so clearly marked, as in refer- 
ence to our own. We were made the stewards of a most 
holy trust, — even truth and freedom for the world. 

Then, as the conclusion on this point, I declare my con- 
viction, that such territory as we have peacefully and right- 
fully acquired, belongs, by the special appointment of God, 
unto the American people; and with this land has been com- 
mitted to their charge the safe keeping of human liberty and 
the Protestant religion. In the first assault which the Papacy 
made upon the new born Protestant nation, to devour it in 
the bud, God appeared signally for our deliverance, marking 
thus most clearly His intentions. When a Catholic power 
took possession of the Canadas, and stretched its lines from 
the St. Lawrence through all this valley to the mouth of the 
Mississippi — holding thus the keys and the heart of future 
dominion — God scattered their strength and banished them 
from the country, showing that he intended this land to be 
the liome and the possession of a Protestant people. 

How then are we to show faithfulness to our trust ? How 
are we to perpetuate an American nation ? Not by permit- 
ting every stranger who sets foot upon our shores, a partici- 
pation in, and control over our affairs, equal to our own; for 
that, if persisted in, will blot out our principles and our 
nationality together. It can only be effected by extending 
the privileges of citizenship to tliose only who are tliorough- 
ly Americanized, so that die naUon shall adopt the foreign 
material no faster than it can be completely assimilated. 
By no other method whatever is it possible for us to extend 
the growth of our principles into all the world. 

Genuine American principles, however, neither demand nor 
imply the slightest hatred or prejudice against the foreigner 
who may seek our shores. They call for no contempt of 
the immigrant who may fly from the poverty and sufferings 
of Europe; no disregard of his rights or his feelings. But 
while his prejudices are strong about him, and he can know 



17 

little or nothing of our institutions, prudence and self-respect 
alike demand, that for his sake, and for ours, we should re- 
frain from putting into his hand an instrument wherewith, in 
his mistaken judgment, he may root up the liberty tree 
under which he came to repose. 

American principles — I mean, here, those which demand 
suitable restrictions in regard to citizenship — are the only 
ones which are really consistent with a true kindness towards 
the immigrants themselves. It is merely to inform them on 
their arrival, that they have been educated in a manner very 
different from ourselves, and that our social and political ma- 
chine is one of great delicacy of structure; and without some 
study and experience it cannot be understood. Sit ye down 
here safely under the shadow of my tree, partake freely of 
the rich fruits around you, and the very moment you are 
qualified, the moment you will not ignorantly endanger your 
blessings, and mine, you shall be admitted to all the rights 
of the native born. Is not this to manifest a higher, nobler, 
truer regard for the foreigner, than to bestow upon him at 
once a gift he cannot appreciate, a power of which he is 
profoundly ignorant, and let him fall into the hands of some 
selfish, reckless demagogue, who will set him to demolish 
the very institutions which he came over the ocean to enjoy ? 
What greater cruelty can be shown the foreigner than that? 

We are suffering to an incalculable degree, at this very 
moment: to an extent no words can describe, from the broad 
and rapid and unebbing tide of pauperism, degradation and 
crime setting in upon us from Europe. 

I know, that mingled with this, there is also much, very 
much, which is noble and valuable, much whose presence is 
a choice accession to our land. But the general influence 
of foreign immigration is too plainly marked to be mistaken. 
The criminals, the paupers, the sabbath-breakers, the main 
supporters of infidelity, are not drawn in great numbers from 
the native American population. You may visit the poor- 
houses, and houses of correction, the jails, and penitentia- 
ries; you may enter the lowest and most vicious haunts of 
society, the places of sabbath resort and sabbath desecra- 
3 



tion, and you will find there comparatively few of the de- 
scendants of the Puritans. And it is high time that Europe 
should cease from her attempts to make of our land a Botany 
Bay — the common sewer of eartli — the very Tophet wherein 
to empty the sweepings of the globe, and then taunt us with 
the fearful increase of crime in a Republican government. 

But still, true American principles require us to look kindly 
upon the lowest and worst of all these, as a brother man — 
to reform, if possible, the vicious; to exalt the degi'aded; to 
instruct the ignorant: to fit him for the enjoyment of a free- 
man's rights, and then, without an hour's delay, make him 
the full joint heir of the native born, to the priceless inheri- 
tance of an American citizen. Yet, strange as it may seem, 
men who adopt such principles and are struggling to carry 
them out in action, are denounced as narrow-minded, short 
sighted, wrong-headed, intolerant bigots, unworthy to live in 
this most liberal age;' — while they are the only friends of 
man, the only far-seeing, sagacious, disinterested patriots : the 
only " Simon Pure" specimens; who, almost from the wharf 
where they land, or the poor-house, or house of correction, 
march up to the ballot-box gangs of men who know as little 
of our counti-y as they do of Le Verrier's planet, and who yet 
are permitted to decide questions of public policy, which in- 
volves the reputation — yes, more — the very existence of our 
country. Such a spectacle is without a parallel in the his- 
tory of earth. No nation but our own ever dared the egre- 
gious folly of permitting its household gods to be scorned 
and trampled by the stranger. It seems to be considered a 
part of an American's duty, neither " to peep, nor move the 
wing," when even the inmate of a foreign prison or poor- 
house comes to revile our institutions, or to spit upon our 
fathers' graves. 

However much for party interests' sake the true Ameri- 
can principles on this point may be denounced, they alone 
have power to preserve the American name, or prevent our 
foreign population from meeting here the very evils and op- 
pressions from which they fled, when they sought our 
shores. It is for them., no less than for ourselves, that we 



19 

desire to preserve the inheritance bestowed upon our fathers, 
and defended at the expense of so much treasure and blood. 

Preserve the Repubhc pure at the core; let it be American 
there, and let it grow by natural increase, and by assimila- 
tion; not by the unchecked addition of material, which, after 
its incorporation, remains foreign still. You cannot build 
the Temple of American Liberty from the drift-wood of 
European rivers. Cut the timber from our native forests, or 
from trees that have been planted here long enough to take 
root in American soil. 

Again; we are to preserve the American principles and 
name, by guarding ourselves, at all points, against the power 
and cunning of Rome, No greater, no more fatal delusion 
could seize the American mind, than to suppose that the 
atrocities of Rome belong only to the past; that noiv her 
principles and her practice have yielded to the liberalizing 
spirit of the age. No man can entertain that opinion who 
has thoroughly mastered her system. 

Rome, in her very nature, is unchangeable. Let her give 
up the principle which not only justifies but demands the 
persecution of the heretic, and it would annihilate the Pa- 
pacy. Rome cannot change. What she was in the Alpine 
vallies, and in the plains of Languedoc, that she is to-day in 
this our western home. We are engaged here in the same 
great struggle which has been going on for ag«s between 
Puritanism and Papacy. It wears here the same general 
characteristics, and looks to the same result — the death 
either of Despotism or Liberty. 

Here, on our own soil, the gathered experience of a thou- 
sand years, and the energies of these modern times are 
brought to the final struggle — the death-grapple — in which 
Romanism, or Protestantism and Liberty must die. I mean 
not that Catholics must die, nor that they must be persecu- 
ted, or hated, or shunned, or injured in one hair of their 
heads. Be they welcome to dwell here in safety and peace. 
But I do mean, that the Politico-religious engine which the 
despotisms of Europe own, and whose chief engineer sitteth 
on the seven hills; I mean that this must be dashed in pieces. 



20 

or Liberty will be crushed. To protect ourselves against 
Rome, our enemy, whose hate and warfare have survived a 
thousand years, this is not intolerance or bigotry,—- but self- 
defence. 

We are Protestants, and Rome will slay us if she has the 
power. Her instincts are steady to that point, as the needle 
to the pole. Never has the voice of a Protestant been raised 
in her presence, but, if she had the power, she has hushed 
it in the deep dungeon, or the stiller grave. 

We are friends of liberty; and not a movement has been 
made in all the earth, since Rome had a being, but she has 
hastened to trample it down. We are the friends of intel- 
lectual progress. Her province is to smother the human 
mind in a wrappage of forms, lay it in the tomb, and then 
burn wax tapers by the sepulchre. 

This Protestant Republic cannot dwell in peace with 
Rome. The union of the lamb and tiger would be nothing 
to that. It is too well known to be dwelt upon here, that 
the Romish movement upon our soil, with its gigantic plans 
for emigration, is a political crusade against American liberty, 
carried on under the guidance of the crowned heads of 
Europe, and waged principally through the ballot-box and 
Jesuit schools. 

The present plan of Rome is to conquer America, as a 
portion of Europe was won back from the Reformation — by 
the teaching of our children; and waiting quietly till a gen- 
eration has grown up into Romanists; while, by the impor- 
tation of Catholic voters, they gain possession of the ballot 
box. These two ideas explain the whole. This enables us 
to understand why the Jesuits of Europe, and that hater of 
liberty, Metternich of Austria, and that heretic burner, the 
Pope, are so over anxious that our American children should 
have the means of education, while their own countries are 
left in most barbarous ignorance. Why does their charity 
and their love pass by their own miserable populations with- 
out a thought or a care, and hasten over the ocean with sym- 
pathy and gold? Why, even here, are thousands of Catholic 
children growing up untaught, while so many seminaries are 



21 

opened on all sides for the dear children of the heretics? 
These schools are under the direction of Jesuits; and this 
answers all. Give to the Jesuit the education of American 
children, and he knows that the result is sure. 

How fitting it would be to send for a monarch, or a mon- 
arch's tool to teach our children American liberty; and how 
admirable the sagacity which employs a tool of the Pope to 
train up our children in Protestantism. Here let me add, 
on the authority of some of the best writers of Europe, and 
some experience here, that it is an impudent pretension that 
Jesuits are more complete scholars than our own, or that a 
more polished education can be obtained in their seminaries. 
The exact contrary is the fact. In every thing which teaches 
mind to think, to live, to act, our native schools are immea- 
surably superior. In these seminaries the world over, there 
is the mere semblance of mental life. It is death in ghastly 
imitation of life. It is like a march of men in their wind- 
ing sheets; it is a dance of corpses. There is plenty of words, 
and books, and philosophical apparatus, but no thought, nor 
investigation, nor result worthy of a soul. The system pro- 
duces not a living thing but a mechanism. 

Where it has done its utmost, where Rome has wrought 
without let or hindrance, what has been the result ? Let 
Italy answer, gasping under the Austrian's armed heel, 
swarming with an ignorant superstitious population. Let 
Spain and Portugal, mouldering yet in the grave of the mid- 
dle ages, let them bear testimony. Let miserable Mexico; 
let cursed and blighted South America reply; and then bring 
upon the stand the famished millions of Ireland. 

You have seen a man, devoid of taste for the true and 
beautiful, trimming down the trees of an avenue into stiff, 
fantastic shapes: cones, pyramids, and what not; stiff, mo- 
tionless and unnatural; — you have compared these living 
statues with some magnificent oak, shaped into the free and 
graceful proportions of nature, tossing its bending branches; 
mighty in its huge strength, yet very beautiful, and making 
sweet music, with its trembling leaves, through all the sum- 
mer day. 



This will illustrate the difference between Jesuitical ma- 
chine-making and American education. One of the most 
effectual safeguards against the encroachments of Romanism 
is the education of our own children. This, surely, is neither 
bigotry nor intolerance. Not an American child should 
ever be committed for an hour, to the care of any teacher 
who will not imbue his mind with American principles; who 
will not teach him to love, honor and protect whatever be- 
longs to a Protestant American Republic. 

A system of Protestant education of the highest order, 
and ample enough to embrace every child, should be at once 
provided for this western valley; and not an ounce of patron- 
age should be withdrawn from any of our teachers, by 
placing one child where he will be taught, (if it is possible,) 
to forget, or insult the memory of our fathers. Through 
these, our own seminaries, it should be our assiduous endea- 
vor to create a literature which shall be thoroughly Ameri- 
can, the true outgrowth and expression of the American soul. 

Here, by my side, is that bold, strong pioneer in education 
and religion at the West;(i^ who has grown gray, but not 
7veak, in maintaining our fathers' faith. 

Had he been sustained, as I think he might and should 
have been, a Catholic seminary would not have supplanted 
in this city one which he designed for the Protestant educa- 
tion of our daughters; and if he is now supported in that 
effort to supply the West with Protestant schools; of which 
effort, I take it, he is the originator; in that game in which 
the souls of our children and the liberties of America are at 
stake, the Jesuits may be check-mated yet. 

With regard to our Catholic brethren, we have no mission 
which implies hatred, or ill will, or the slightest degree of 
persecution. We are not required, or even allowed, to in- 
terfere with their rights, or to abridge their comforts; but we 
are solemnly charged by our God, by an expecting world, by 
the examples and precepts of our fathers, to prevent them 
from subverting the foundations of our state. They shall 
never.be permitted to take our Bible from us; they shall not 

(1) Dr. Beecher. 



23 

lead our children in captivity to Rome; they shall dig no ■ 
dungeons in our soil; nor drive the stake, nor kindle the 
faggot here. We will permit no American blood to bespatter 
the javv^s of the dragon; we will have no American chris- 
tians dismissed in a fire chariot to heaven. We will never 
permit the standard of Rome to be hoisted over the Ameri- 
can flag ! No ! no ! God gave this country to our fathers 
and us a Protestant land, and we will keep it thus. At 
whatever peril, or expense of treasure, or of life, if need be; 
though it cost a thousand Bunker Hills, this country must 
remain to the end free Protestant America, — our own, as 
well as, our native land. 

What have distinctive American principles and American 
character wrought in this land : a spectacle for the world ? 
They have given birth to a new nation on earth, and have 
placed its name among the mightiest; not without a struggle; 
but now, without dispute, acknowledged to be great, long ere 
it has reached the maturity of its stature. This greatness, 
in every important feature, is American. 

These free institutions are the outgrowth of American 
mind and a Protestant faith. Our Free Schools, our Col- 
legiate system, our Theological Seminaries, our Bibles, and 
Churches, and pulpits for preaching, these are not children of 
foreign birth, they are Native Americans . 

Strike out from all our country's achievements and pos- 
sessions — territorial, civU, moral and religious — what is dis- 
tinctively American, and what would remain ? Sweep away 
whatever is foreign — I speak not of men, but of principles, 
and manners, and faith — and how much should we be injured? 

American principles have bequeathed to us those stirring 
memories of an heroic age, which, next to the Gospel, have 
power to elevate, to strengthen, to refine the public mind. 
The eloquence of other times that thundered along the At- 
lantic; the blood shed there; the thought of the great men 
who dwelt there; these, and the Gospel, have thus far pre- 
served our nationality. How has this wondrous West been 
made what we now behold ? 



24 

The Romanist was here a hundred years before us. The 

old Avoods were subjected to the spell of the Vatican; but it 
produced here no thronging population; no railroads, nor fleets 
of commerce, nor canals, nor roads, nor even one Queen 
City. It produced not even a clearing; the most important 
fruit was the tinkle of a litde bell, to call a few Indians to 
kneel before the Virgin. 

But when a Protestant faith came and breathed over the 
valley, these empires started into life. 

Two things American principles have not done. They 
have not struggled to perpetuate slavery; to gain one foot of 
land by conquest; and genuine American policy has not shed 
one drop of Mexican blood. 

It has been fashionable, perhaps still is, to deride those 
who are endeavoring to base political action upon American 
principles and a Protestant faith. The time is coming when 
this will be found the largest idea that ever rallied a party. 
The time will come when christians will find it necessary to 
drop all other considerations, and rally politically around 
their fathers' faith; not to force it upon any one, but to pre- 
serve it from overthrow. To all who are endeavoring to 
make prominent and stable our fathers' distinctive features 
of policy, let me say, in closing, that the old party lines are 
fading, old party war-cries are losing all their potency. 

There must inevitably be a dissolution of the present great 
parties of the country. The new ones will be formed upon 
moral questions; and for an ^imerican citizen, whether na- 
tive or foreign born, I see no nobler rallying point than the 
Protestant American flag. 

Then cut the foreign prisons and poor-houses from our 
Eagle's wings, untie the Pope from about his neck, and he 
will no longer stoop to earth, and draggle his feathers in his 
lumbering flight, but he will re-mount at once to his proper 
station, the heights of the middle heaven. 



